Guides
10 long-form guides to The North Shore, each one signed and dated so you can see how current it is. They answer the questions that do not fit on a listings page: how the place is laid out, what you will actually be charged for, and which trade-offs are worth making.
Start here
About a hundred miles, three and a half hours of driving and no road around Kaʻena Point. Which direction you choose decides which side of the car the ocean is on.
Guide
About a hundred miles, three and a half hours of driving and no road around Kaʻena Point. Which direction you choose decides which side of the car the ocean is on.
9 min readNalani Kahale
Guides
Guide
Thirty-five miles and about an hour of driving, and almost everybody gets it wrong by arriving at eleven. The whole day turns on leaving early enough to beat the Haleʻiwa bottleneck.
8 min readNalani Kahale
Guide
One large resort, a thin and legally complicated rental market, two campgrounds and a coast where dinner stops at seven. Staying up here is a decision, not a default.
9 min readNalani Kahale
Guides
Guide
About the same number of people live along this coast as fill a single Waikīkī hotel block, and several million visitors a year drive past their houses. Most of what follows is about that.
9 min readMalia Fonoti
Guide
A sugar town lost its mill in 1971 and put shrimp ponds on the cane land. Fifty years later the roadside stands are the most reliable meal on the North Shore, and they close early.
8 min readMalia Fonoti
Guide
Seven miles of coast with one place to park the car and walk. Haleʻiwa is a former plantation and railway town that turned into the commercial heart of surfing, and still shuts early.
8 min readMalia Fonoti
Guides
Guide
The same sand that is a family beach in July closes to swimmers in January. Learning which coast you are standing on is the single most useful thing a visitor here can do.
10 min readPete Sorensen
Guide
Five months of the best shore snorkelling on this side of Oʻahu, and seven months of water that has killed people. The whole guide is about telling which one you are looking at.
9 min readPete Sorensen
Guide
Green sea turtles come out of the water here to rest on dry sand, which almost nowhere else in the world lets you see from a public beach. The etiquette is simple and widely ignored.
8 min readMalia Fonoti
Guides
Guide
In July the North Shore is one of the best family coasts in Hawaiʻi. In January it is a place to watch from behind a rope. Planning the right one is the whole job.
9 min readNalani Kahale